Multiple input—multiple output (MIMO) radio communication techniques increase the throughput of a data communications system by taking advantage of multiple transmit and multiple receive antennas. MIMO radio communication systems include transmitters that each has multiple transmit antennas and receivers that each has multiple receive antennas. Two transmission techniques are commonly used for MIMO radio communications. One technique is based on space-time coding (STC) or Matrix A, which transmits only one data stream from a transmitter with multiple transmit antennas to a receiver with at least one receive antenna. The received signal to interference and noise ratio (SINR) of an STC system is improved due to the spatial diversity of the MIMO channel. Another technique used with MIMO radio communications sends separate streams of data from multiple transmitter antennas. Transmitting separate streams of data from each of multiple transmitter antennas located at a single transmitter is referred to as spatial multiplexing (SM) or Matrix B. Spatial multiplexing increases the overall transmitted data rate for a MIMO system. IEEE 802.16 standard defines the two MIMO techniques. However, no efficient method to select between the two is available.
Therefore a need exists to overcome the problems with the prior art as discussed above.